Candidates not only shun immigrants, now it’s citizens of color too

Though many of the candidates openly scorn migrants, they are quietly (and obviously) scorning africa-american, latino and other communities of color. As most of you probably know, Thompson, Giuliani, McCain, and Romney have refused to debate infront of Tavis Smiley, a leading journalist with PBS at a historically black college. This comes on the heels of several candidates refusing to appear at a Univision debate.

“There is a pattern here,” Smiley told the Huffington Post. “When you tell every black and brown request that you get throughout the primary process that ‘no, there’s a scheduling problem.’ That’s a pattern… Are we really supposed to believe that all four of these guys couldn’t make it because of scheduling?”

Whoaaaaaa – these guys think they can win not only by shunning immigrants, but also by neglecting communities of color? Has anyone looked up hubris in the dictionary lately? anybody?

“It’s not just that they are not coming. It’s that some of them are visibly insulting us,” Cecilia Munoz, vice president of NCLR, told the Politico.

Anti-migration advocates try to tell communities of color that they should be against migrants, because they take their jobs. Then Giuliani, Romney and other candidates that have been scapegoating migrants turn around and insult and neglect communities of color by not even showing up to our debates.

By marginalizing voters of color these candidates are doing much worse than insulting us, they are marginalizing the issues that are most important to our communities, knowingly or not.

It is clear that during these elections migrants and communities of color will have to join forces to have our voice heard, our issues addressed, to ensure that a president with some modicum of interest in the strength of our communities is elected.